An article transport facility is used, for example, to transport materials, intermediate products, finished products, and the like in manufacturing facilities and the like of various products. In general, an article transport facility includes an article transport device including a traveling portion that travels on a traveling rail provided along a transport path, and a transfer unit that is coupled to the traveling portion and performs an operation of transferring an article to and from a transport target location. When such an article transport facility is used, for example, in a clean room or the like, the article transport facility may further include, in addition to the article transport device, a cleaning device including a traveling portion and a cleaning unit that is coupled to the traveling portion and performs a cleaning operation on a cleaning target location. An article transport facility having such a cleaning function is disclosed in JP 5495070B (Patent Document 1), for example.
In the article transport facility of Patent Document 1, the driving power to the traveling portion (42F, 42R) of an article transport device (2) and a cleaning device (2A) is supplied from a noncontact-type feeding portion (24, 25) (see paragraphs [0087] and [0109] of Patent Document 1). On the other hand, the driving power to a cleaning unit (G, 41) is supplied from a power storage device installed in the cleaning unit (see paragraph [0113]).
However, when the driving power to the cleaning unit is supplied from the power storage device, the driving state of the cleaning unit is dependent on the charging state of the power storage device. For this reason, there is a limit to the time during which the cleaning operation can be actually performed, and it has been necessary to suspend a cleaning operation, for example, for replacement of the power storage device.